The problem with losing, what we lose the most is our head, our rationale. When we lose, frequently it's because of ourselves. A loss can be a win, it just depends on the decisions you're making. So, risk or losses, the meaning of risk, they can only be quantified in how sane the trader is.
Risk to me deals with losing percentages only, so if I keep them under 10% and breakevens (0 to +1 tick) under 15% in scalping, should be averaging one point in ES. Since risk, 2 to 6 points, is always greater than reward, I must keep percentages low. Scalping for ticks at the high levels of ES now is impossible so have had to adapt but still keep same patterns to trade. I trade like a machine, no time to think at all of how I feel whether sane or not, but I think most humans should be well versed in focusing of trading to getting into a zone.
In reality, I measure neither risk nor reward, as a discretionary long only stock trader, after researching the target, I weigh up probabilities, which is vague because it's a guess too. I'm more interested in something which in the long term will be a several bagger. Frequently I'll enter a trade and it goes against me immediately or the following day. So I target usually high risk, smaller cap, speculative positions including penny stocks and do so with multiple positions, I'm currently holding 85 different positions and I care not greatly about what any single position is doing once bought. Like keys on a piano they move up and down constantly, over the long haul, I expect the portfolio to make progress. The secrets are, you have to be in to win, you need exposure, one cannot second guess tomorrow because one minute to the next I have no idea which will gain and which will lose. Diversify; for me these days I trade anything, yesterday was a goat milk infant powder company and had the perfect trade entering the bottom for the day and up 25% eod (yu gotta have a rarety good day sometimes). I'll hold this for months or more unless something stupid happens. I prefer to buy bottom dwellers, if something has run hard I won't touch it, everything sooner or later pulls back, that's what I watch. Today Thursday (asx not open yet) I'll add another small bite to a copper stock I have and which has pulled back. I only need one of these stocks to blast up high and fast to make a big portfolio difference. If any of my stocks go to zero, it's a small wound, and I've encountered this several times.
One can skew reward vs risk into your favour by being very selective. In the early trading years I had a gung ho approach. As my employment background is engineering, I became aware when working, one fuckup in a process can add huge penalties to a job, time wasted, money wasted as well as frustration and bad reputation. View trading the same way, take your time, patience, be careful, do research homework, add up pros and cons, pull the trigger and don't entertain regrets once the trade is in motion.
Welcome back from your surgery, seems it went well. With what you typed above, the surgery was not on your tiny little mouse balls, because based on the above post you have that balls-as-big-as-church-bells strategy. I like it.